Turning Out
by Sockyy
Summary: What will be the outcome of this?
1. Chapter 1

Prologue  
"Nikki D, why don't you ever sing for us?" giggled a childish, someone staticy voice. Bella, I immediately assumed. I couldn't be sure, not seeing anyone's face behind this cold room, but Bella was the most common caller, always pestering me with these ridiculous question.

I switched the microphone to the other side. "Well, for starters, I sound like what you get when you key a CD that's half-melted," I explained, dryly.

"Oh, Nikki D, I'm Bella; your number one fan!" she squealed, as I pressed the button, cutting her off.

"Mmmhmm...next caller," I said, trying to hide my pure boredom.

"My name's Jeremiah, from Woodwin-- er, Windwood. Yeah, are you single?" And unfamiliar voice nervously said, slurring together his words. "N-not that I care or anything. I'm just curious," he quickly added.

I raised an eyebrow. "And on that note, Nikki D is OUT!" I said as enthusiastically as I could, faking a laugh. I searched for the button on the small control panel above me, finally finding it,, shoving my paw on it as hard as I could. I tore of my headphones, throwing them to the side, and rushed out into the main-room of Nookington's. You could call me spoiled, having a job as easy as a radio personality, but the pay was low, and I was the only one throughout towns and towns, cities and cities. Worse, I hated attention.

_I walked into Nookington's, barely a year ago, just excepting to buy an umbrella for the upcoming rain. Finding a decent one--just plain black--I put my paw in the air to call for Nook._

"Maddie! Maddie!" he said, rushing over to me.

"Yeah, I'd like to buy thi--"

"You have a good sense of humor, right?" I was confused at the question, but still, gave a reluctant answer.

"Uh, yeah, you could say that..." I said, glancing around.

"Good! Do you want to be the radio host? Do you, do you?" he said eagerly, jumping around.

"Eh, may--"

"Great! Meet me after ten. I'll be here; we'll talk." I half-expected him to say 'I'll have my people call your people,' as he gave me a super-star smile when I decided to walk out without the umbrella.

I set my alarm clock to go off at ten. The job seemed interesting enough--as long as nobody could see my face. When I walked over there, he made it sound absolutely perfect, and I couldn't help but take it with no hesitation.

"Good show, 'Nikki D,'" the old raccoon said, not bothering to look up as he polished his sign.

"Yeah...right," I said, grabbing my old, black leather coat from the hanger, rushing out the door. I was just trying to rush home as the winter breeze thrashed against my face without getting frostbite, when I heard the same voice earlier calling me in the distance.

_"Mollie!"_ Bella called, carefully dodging a mud puddle as she ran up to me.

"Maddie," I corrected her, keeping my voice indifferent.

"No, Nikki D!" she squeaked so high it was piercing.

I stopped in my track. "What?" I demanded.

"I noticed Nikki D is always off at eight. After spying, I saw you always come out of that back room in Nook's at eight!" She gave a proud smile.

I tried to speak, but I was interrupted. "EVERYONE, COME HERE!" I heard a loud group of footsteps in the distance. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by more animals jumping around like maniacs then I could count. My heart stopped.

"Surprise!" The white mouse cheered. "You can sign autographs now! I called everyone I knew from every town! They all LOVE you!"

I felt woozy, sick to the stomach. My heart was sinking. I closed my eyes as tight as possible.

Finally, daring to look, I saw no crowd. No Nookingtons, no fans--no nothing. All there was, was pure blackness. I could feel my body falling, but there wasn't wind against it, ruffling my brown fur.

A scream rose from my throat, but I couldn't make a sound. I tried to stop myself from hyperventilating as I continued to fall as moments passed.

"AAAH!" I could finally make out. It was more of a gasp then a scream, since I couldn't keep the sound for long. Just then, I stopped. I was still surrounded by blackness, and I couldn't feel a solid holding my up. I was just floating there.

Finally, I saw a figure pace towards me from the distance. He was a white cat, with illegible scribble on her face in many colors. "Hello, Nikki D," she whispered to me, the faint, cold voice echoing.

I decided to let her call me what she wanted. "Where am I?!" I instantly demanded.

The cat snapped her fingers, and a bright red couch instantly appeared under me. I hesitantly took a seat.

"This will take a bit of time to explain. For starters, my name is Blanca," She said in a husky voice. She began pacing on the darkness.

"Well, we select one villager from every town who has the absolute worse phobia. You--Nikki D-- are scared of _attention?_" Blanca gave a slight laugh. "How silly," she said, clearly just saying it to mock me.

"You will come here for a year, facing your fear. You will be going step by step, slowly learning the ropes of this place. Now, of course you wont be here for a year. After you have completely gotten this place down, you can return home, and it'll only seem like you blinked."

"You will be given a house. You'll have someone share that house with you, but they'll be in a separate room. You'll go to training together, and probably have a couple other people with you. I'd suggest you learn to not hate them. It's pretty much the same as any other neighborhood, but in the words of many guests here, 'floating in blackness.'"

"Well, you can go to other houses to get more explanation. I'm not much for words." Blanca flashed a smug grin. _"Welcome to Nightmares."_


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter One  
Before I could speak, I was once again, falling. But this time, instead of darkness, there were flashing images. Strobe light surrounded me, making it harder to see the pictures.

Although I felt myself falling, I was now inside the image of a small, blue kitten. She was in a large, empty room. There were bizarre glass sculptures across the sides on the paneled floor, but nothing else. "Hello?" she called quietly, her voice echoing. Everything seemed to melt into the next image.

Water. She was in the same room, but full of water. A rope appeared, tying around her. I could feel what she felt--my lungs beginning to burst, just wanting to be able to move. She opened her mouth to scream, and the vision I saw was now entering her throat. Once surrounded by darkness, I blinked, finding the next cruel scene.

The same cat was now on a stage, a microphone in front of her. I was in a crowd of screaming, jumping animals. The cat opened her mouth, no sound coming out. "I-I," she looked down at the script. I could see from my seat it was smeared with blood-stained, and he paws were damp with the red liquid. I was pushed down by the crowd, into the next scene.

We were in a parking lot--the kind with the walls all around it, practically making it a room. A figure I couldn't make it was holding the cat, continually throwing her face into one of the concrete arches. The cat's body was lifelessly moving, like a sewn doll. I couldn't get a good look before I blinked, making everything go away.

This was real. I could feel everything--but it looked more animated than the images I had just seen was. It was like a normal neighborhood; houses lined up across a street, a large field was across from me, and a couple normal-looking animals ran around in it, throwing a frisbee. but everything was discolored. The trees had purple bark with silver leaves. The house I was on the porch of was a bright orange, with hot pink splotches on it. The only thing that seemed normal was myself and the other animals.

I glanced up to the translucent red sign on the door. Rosie & Nikki. Before I even thought about the name in edition to mine, I figured that here I would have to deal with being called by my radio personality name, although I was thankful I didn't have to have the "D" that Tom Nook insisted I had when I first got the job.

Then, I remembered something. Bella always went on about her friend named Rosie from another town. If this WAS that particular Rosie, and her and Bella were such great friends, I would be in for one long year.

I got up from the concrete porch. Despite the material, I barely felt it when I hit the floor. It didn't seem like a big deal, considering the rest of what I had seen.

I walked in, hesitantly, to find a sobbing figure on the floor. Eyeliner dripped from her eyes, and her fur was wet with tears. But there was something more important than that; she was the same cat in the terrifying images I had seen.

"YOU!" I instantly heard. The feline jumped to her feet, a finger pointed at me. "I know you!" she screamed, her voice full of fury for some reason.

I just blinked. "You!" she repeated, falling to her knees, continuing to bawl. "I hate you," she said between breaths.

"You were there--being attacked by a clown with a knife! Thrown off the building, stuck in the coffin! But that's not anything," she panted, full of pain.

"Trapped in the room...you were in the chains, covered in blood. Why were you torturing me?" she cried, desperately.

"I--"

"WHY!?" she snapped, her voice once again full of hate. She was almost as scary as the figure in the parking lot.

I took a deep breath. "If you give me one minute to talk, I can explain," I said, firmly.

She was silent. "I saw you. You were in a wide opened space, then the center of attention, drowning, and..." I tried to think of how to explain the fourth scene as least-detailed as possible. "And some dude was smashing your face against concrete in a parking lot..." I shook my head. "I think they're exploiting our fears, but with other people, to get us ready for however they're gonna torture us." I wondered why I didn't freak out.

I could tell Rosie was holding in screams. "So you have the opposite of claustrophobia, scared of attention, drowning...and pain?" she suggested.

"Scared of death," I corrected her. "I'm actually a Masochist," I added.

"So...you _like_ pain?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

I sighed. I hated explaining the term to people. "Not exactly...It's more like..." I searched for words. "Being _grateful_ because of the pain." Rosie blinked, and I decided to give up. "Never mind."

Up until now, I hadn't bothered to look at the house. There was a normal color scheme, to my joy--although I was used to looking at terrible ones. In my room at Nook's, I had chosen lime green walls with pink streaks, looking 'spunky.' The rooms wasn't more than a white box with a black, leather couch to the side.

Now that everything was calm, I payed more attention to Rosie, as well. She appeared about sixteen--I was glad that I wasn't _quite_ old enough to be her mother, at twenty nine.

"You're afraid of clowns, heights, have claustrophobia, and...chains?" I confirmed.

"Blood, not chains," she shuddered. "It's gross. By the way, I'm Rosie."

I nodded. "Yeah, I saw that on the door. I'm...Nikki," I said, agreeing to take the name instead of having to explain my name was Maddie; Nikki was my Radio Personality name.

"So, we're gonna be living together...for a year?" Rosie asked. "That guy didn't explain it very well..."

I nodded. "I think...Let's go check out our rooms," I suggested, figuring it would brighten up the mood...hopefully.

Rosie forced a smile. "Sounds good."

The stairs were wooden, and some-what creaky. They gave you that feeling that you're going to fall, so I ran up them as quickly as possible. Rosie seemed to notice the same thing,sprinting up them right after me.

The same white-paint filled the upstairs hall. There was a bathroom to the side, and two bedrooms. They were identical, besides the wooden plate on each that read our names. The one saying "Nikki," was to the right, farther from the bathroom.

Rosie quickly sprung into her room, so I decided to take a quick look at mine. there was a hammock to the left, and a dresser filled with clothes I usually wore. There was a wooden desk, that had some paper and a pen on it. These people weren't so creative when it came to interior, although I didn't know how they obtained my wardrobe.

Then, I noticed a bookshelf. On it were three dusty books. I reluctantly walked over to one, kneeling down to pick it up. I wiped the dust off the black book with my paw, revealing the title, in gold cursive. _"The Maddie, "Nikki D," Cromwell Chronicles" "Book I: Childhood."_ I flipped through that pages. I found the time I broke my nose in softball, the time my brother was playing baseball and had a foul ball that pushed me off the stands, the time I got a concussion--I had forgotten I was still a klutz back then.

I wiped the dust off the next two. "Sweet Sixteen to Adult" and "Time in Nightmares." Nightmares, I could tell without reading anything, actually _had_ everything that I would do here, and exactly how I did it. Something had stopped me from reading it, however.

I walked out of my room, deciding to wait for Rosie. As we walked down the stairs, I decided I could hint on the books without actually saying anything to give it away too much. "So, do you enjoy reading?" I asked, casually.


End file.
